Encounters

2015/2016

In this new serie famous and unknown people meet each other in an intimate relationship regardless of time and place. Another thing to keep in mind is the fact that quoting is role reinforcing… no use to quote an unknown artist…. My way to renovate history.

This is the first painting I made: ‘Love Affair’. In this painting Milkmaid from the painting of Vermeer meets Michiel de Ruyter on one of her imaginary trips to Japan.

Lobengula KaMzilikazi took a lift on the shelf of Venus while she is participating in the painting of Botticelli ‘The birth of Venus’. I just like the contrast, the idea they spent a nice time together. The face is Martin Luther King.

Votes is about the female voice in history.
Emmeline Pankhurst (15 July 1858 – 14 June 1928) was a British political activist and leader of the British suffragette movement who helped women win the right to vote.
Joan of Arc (6 January c. 1412 – 30 May 1431), nicknamed “The Maid of Orléans”, is considered a heroine of France for her role during the Hundred Years’ War.
Tintin (Kuifje) from the comic books of Hergé is a young Belgian reporter who becomes involved in dangerous cases in which he takes heroic action to save the day.

Here we see Genghis Kahn, the severe emperor of the Mongol empire. He is sitting in his Asian chair, a carpet on a roll in his background. Just sitting there and looking at his new object: a plastic music box with a naked ballerina, made in Taiwan.

Love and Marriage……..
Go together like a horse and carriage…………
This I tell ya brother, you can’t have one …….
without the other…………
Love and Marriage……………..
It’s an institute you can’t disparage………….
Ask the local gentry, and they will say is element’ry……………
Try, try, try to separate them……………..
It’s an illusion……………
Try, try, try and you will only come …………
to this conclusion……………. (song)

This painting is about Rembrandt and Mondriaan. Saskia, the wife of Rembrandt, painted in the sleeping room is now positioned in an open space.. in the forest? near the river? in a lake? The Saskia I painted is lifting her skirt just a bit more than the one on the painting of Rembrandt.
The face in the painting you could recognise as Mondriaan. Is he watching Saskia?

Really don’t know why it came to my mind to picture these two extremely different men. After I made the painting I found that they both have more in common than I knew.
Both have the same age: Hitler was born in april 1889, Schiele in June 1890 and both are born in the same country. They also both fought in WO I. The name of Egon’s father is Adolf. What if they had met at the Art academy in Vienna?

Van Gogh is always pictured as a suffering man, a sad love life, mentally weak or ill, always outof money. A passionate painter but not recognized enough during his life. In this painting he is having a good time loved by an indian woman who he might have met during his walks in the French landscape.

Anna Boleyn was Queen of England from 1533 to 1536 as the second wife of King Henry VIII.
Henry’s marriage to Anne, and her subsequent execution by beheading, made her a key figure in the political and religious upheaval that was the start of the English Reformation.
Red Cloud Sioux
The United States named a war after Red Cloud, a prominent Oglala Lakota chief who led his followers in opposition to the presence of the U.S. military in the area.

(Fe)male

In this series, also on square format, but smaller I am working on a serie of women and men in arts. Women of different times like Artemisia Gentileschi (16th century) and Eva Hesse (20th century). Wouldn’t it be interesting when they could talk about their work and life..?

Quotations

Another thought is about quoting artists. Quotations of course work because the spectator recognizes the reference. Because a lot of works by women are unknown (and of course many oeuvres of male artists too) they are seldom quoted. This shows how quotations are reinforcing the status quo.

Here we see Artemisia Gentileschi painting on a part of a work of Eva Hesse. They are both famous artists and shown in art books. At the time when I went to art school Artemisia was one of the very few women artists that you could find in Arnason….

Eva Hesse was an artist I could Identify with. Her influence as a woman making fundamental art in the seventies has been great and an exception in that time.

Natalja Gontcharova carrying a Motherwell, while the position refers to the image of Maplethorpes’ photo of Louise Bourgeois, after painting to many flowers and birds.

Artemisia Gentileschi painting on a part of a work of Eva Hesse. They are both known artist and shown in art books. At the time when I went to art school Artemisia was one of the very few women artists that you could find in Arnason…. Eva Hesse was an artist I could Identify with. Her influence as a woman working with fundamentle art in the seventies has been great and an exception in that time.

In these two paintings I chose a male and a female painter who knew each other. One is Sien van Houten, who is also the wife of Hendrik Willem Mesdag. She was known as a painter and participated in the making of Panorama Mesdag. The other painter is George Hendrik Breitner. He also worked on the Panorama. I found they both painted flowers in a ginger pot. The selfportrait of Breitner is mixed with a work of Picasso, who was about 20 years younger.

George Hendrik Breitner
I tried to achieve two portraits that show a psychological image of the two. Two portraits that are equal in power and with an androgynous appearance.

De laatste in de serie Encounters gaat eigenlijk ook over ‘een vrouw in de kunst’